José D. Villalobos

In this article, we examine the difficult leadership position President Barack Obama inherited as he took office with respect to science and technology policy making and implementation, particularly following the Bush administration and years of the so-called "war on science." We contend that the Obama administration's challenge is not only to take substantive policy action, but also to reform certain administrative practices, particularly in light of the previous administration's practice of the politics of strategic vacancies, a managerial technique that rearranges an agency's ideological inclinations not through the usual forms of active politicization (i.e., by filling ...

Sara Paretsky, Steven Alan Samson

Steven Alan Samson

Sara Paretsky is the creator of a street-smart feminist series detective, V. I. Warshawski, a former attorney who now investigates white-color crime. Each novel in the series further fleshes out her character and life story as readers are introduced to various friends and relatives, some of whom become staples.

Lawrence Block, Steven Alan Samson

Steven Alan Samson

Hollywood films owe much of their sparkle to atmospheric effects, including the lighting, shading, and color lent by character-actors. Their counterparts in the genre of literary gumshoes may be found in a certain breed of character-detectives. Among them, Lawrence Block, a versatile exemplar of the hard-boiled school of detective fiction, has given readers two notable repeat offenders from New York: Matthew Scudder, the ex-cop, and Bernie Rhodenbarr, the cat burglar with scruples. Both have found their way to Hollywood. Block's work is noted especially for its realistic style, fast-paced plots, spare dialog, and flawed protagonists.

Francis Lieber, Steven Alan Samson

Steven Alan Samson

Theological Sources Of American Constitutionalism, Steven Alan Samson

Steven Alan Samson

The conservative nature and limited objectives of the American War for Independence are difficult to appreciate apart from an understanding of the religious sentiments—the essentially biblical world-view—of the early colonists. To make such a statement is to invite debate in a continuing controversy. But apart from an acquaintance with some of the religious sources of our constitutional tradition, our understanding of the War for Independence and the Constitution of 1787 will be incomplete.

Negotiating The Right Of Return, Neophytos Loizides, Marcos Antoniades

Neophytos Loizides

Negotiating the right of return is a central issue in post-conflict societies aiming to resolve tensions between human rights issues and security concerns. Peace proposals often fail to carefully balance these tensions or to identify incentives and linkages that enable refugee return. To address this gap, the article puts forward an alternative arrangement in negotiating refugee rights currently being considered in the bilateral negotiations in Cyprus. Previous peace plans for the reunification of the island emphasized security and stipulated a maximum number of Greek Cypriot refugees eligible to return under future Turkish Cypriot administration. The authors’ alternative suggests a minimum ...

Elisabeth A. Thomas

The original Assignment Calculator from the University of Minnesota is a free open-source tool which helps students manage time and organize the steps of a research project.(FN1) It provides a schedule and timeline for each step, and includes tips and outside links to more information. The head of instruction and outreach services in the Henry Madden Library recognized the value of this popular tool, but felt we could expand on its potential for students and faculty here at California State University-Fresno. We accomplished this by tailoring it to our own library and campus resources, staff and services, thus making ...

Amy Z Mundorff

The World Trade Center (WTC) victim identification effort highlights taphonomic influences on the degradation of DNA from victims of mass fatality incidents. This study uses a subset of the WTC-Human Remains Database to evaluate differential preservation of DNA by skeletal element. Recovery location, sex, and victim type (civilian, firefighter, or plane passenger) do not appear to influence DNA preservation. Results indicate that more intact elements, as well as elements encased in soft tissue, produced slightly higher identification rates than more fragmented remains. DNA identification rates by element type conform to previous findings, with higher rates generally found in denser, weight-bearing ...

Answering The Cry For Help: A Counselor's Plea For Family Enrichment, Ronald E. Hawkins

Ronald E. Hawkins

The Presidential Election In Cyprus, February 2008, Neophytos Loizides

Neophytos Loizides

A two-round presidential election was held in Cyprus on February 17 and February 24, 2008. The election was the first to take place after the country’s accession to the European Union and the abortive UN-planned referendum on reunification in 2004. It was also the first to be contended and won by a leader of AKEL, the communist party of Cyprus. The 2008 election took place in a highly politicized environment, in the midst of concern over the future of bicommunal negotiations. Incumbent President Tassos Papadopoulos rallied the nationalist vote against his moderate rivals Ioannis Kasoulides from centre right DISY ...

Neophytos Loizides

Relating nationalism to other ideologies or cultural values is one of the most enigmatic scholarly activities. The enigma lies in the kaleidoscopic nature of nationalism and the ease with which it adapts or relates to philosophically opposed ideologies (Hutchinson & Smith, 1994, 3). For example, nationalism often assumes ties to liberalism, even though it presupposes a strong commitment to the national community that transcends individualism. It accommodates conservatism fairly well despite nationalism’s modernizing mission, and it has often been paired with communism, despite the latter’s internationalist rhetoric. More surprisingly, nationalism and religion often go hand in hand, despite their deep philosophical inconsistencies. Nationalism is inherently local, philosophically poor, and limited and it lacks the belief in afterlife salvation and creative intelligence as source of meaning behind the universe (Anderson, 1983; Greenfeld, 1996b). Yet it frequently relates to religions such as Christianity and Islam which are universal in their membership and message of salvation. The article examines the latter relationship, namely that of nationalism and religion, through evidence from Southeast Europe in the past three centuries. It identifies religious and linguistic cleavages as alternative sources of identity construction and points to the ...

What Bush Did Right - On China, Zheng Wang

Zheng Wang

E Pluribus Unum?, Steven Alan Samson

Steven Alan Samson

The nation-state—as opposed to its rivals—offers an opportunity to reconcile the old dilemma of unity vs. diversity. This interplay of individuals, this synergy of forces, this weaving of one fabric out of many threads, has given the West its vitality and cohesion. But Pierre Manent warns that the West risks forfeiting its advantage through the erosion of its political forms, institutions, and families – through globalization and the rationalization of its own liberal values:
[C]ommerce, right, morality: these are the three systems, the three empires that promise exit from the political. Each in its own form: commerce, according ...

Charles Hodge On Law And Religion, Steven Alan Samson

Steven Alan Samson

Hodge recognized that there are limits to liberty. "If a religion should enjoin infanticide, or the murder of the aged or infirm, neither the people nor the government should conform their conduct to its laws.” Hodge's evaluation of the relation of Christianity to the "law of the land" anticipated the Supreme Court's interpretation of the First Amendment in two major polygamy cases, Reynolds v. United States, 98 U.S. 145 (1878) and Davis v. Beason, 133 U.S. 333 (1890). It was with these polygamy cases in mind that Justice William O. Douglas could observe as late as ...

Spirituality And Subjective Well-Being: Empirical Evidences For A New Domain In The Personal Well-Being Index, Eduardo Wills-Herrera

Eduardo Wills-Herrera

Subjective well-being explores the evaluations, both positive and negative, of how people experience their lives. Research in the field inquires how people perceive their well-being in different settings, including different cultures, regions and cities. A large number of different measures have been designed to capture subjective well-being. One of the most used SWB measure is the Personal Well-being Index (PWI), an evaluation of life developed by Cummins et al [(2003). Social Indicators Research, 64, 159–190] which proposes that satisfaction with life consists of seven different life-domains. Theoretical considerations of the contribution of spirituality and religiosity to life satisfaction, from ...

Larry D. Long

Neophytos Loizides

This article examines the effects of elite framing in conflict transformation. It utilizes debates from the Turkish Grand National Assembly (TBMM) as the main source of empirical evidence and demonstrates differences in the way Turkish parliamentarians framed national and foreign policy issues in the 1990s. For the most part, elite framing of Kurdish issues was predominantly monolithic and adversarial towards ‘ethnic others’ demonstrating few challenges to dominant nationalist narratives and discourses, while framing of Greek-Turkish disputes was diverse, with moderates cautiously challenging hardliners on the necessity of cooperating with Greece. The article unravels these elite framing strategies and illustrates how ...

Yulei Luo

Recent research has shown that the “spirit of capitalism”—a preference for wealth itself, in addition to consumption—has important implications for growth and asset pricing. This paper explores how the spirit of capitalism affects saving and consumption behavior. We demonstrate that the spirit of capitalism may reduce the importance of precautionary savings. It can also explain the excess sensitivity puzzle: the spirit of capitalism causes dramatic deviations from a random walk. It may also offer a partial explanation of the excess smoothness puzzle.

The Wealth Distribution And The Demand For Status, Yulei Luo, Eric R. Young

Yulei Luo

Standard economic theories of asset markets assume that assets are valued entirely for the consumption streams they can finance. This paper examines the introduction of the demand for status (as a function of wealth) into a model of uninsurable idiosyncratic risk—the “spirit of capitalism” (“soc”) assumption. We find that soc preferences lead to less inequality in wealth; placing wealth into the utility function leads to a shrinking wealth distribution. The drop in wealth concentration is smaller if the utility function implies status is a luxury good, but no parametrization leads to higher wealth Gini coefficients than the benchmark case ...